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Thursday, 12 May 2016

Nigerians Be Patient; Fuel Price Will Drop In Six Months - Kachikwu

Ibe Kachikwu, the
minister of state for petroleum resources, says “liberalising” of the oil
sector, will force the pump price of fuel, which currently trades at N145, to
drop in six months.

Kachikwu said this on Thursday when he appeared as a guest
on Sunrise Daily, a breakfast programme on Channels Television.

“We mean well and Nigerians should please trust us. Give us
a chance, you will be surprised what will become of your PMS price over the
next six to eight months,” he said.

“As it gets better and it gets to a point where we find that
the market has stabilised in terms of supply, we will begin to pull back a bit
in terms of determinants for pricing.”

He said the authorities had done all it could to end the
ongoing scarcity, and just could not provide foreign exchange for the
importation of fuel.

“You don’t give what you don’t have. We want Nigerians to
understand that we feel the pain, and we have tried to avoid it since I came in
October,” he said.

“We first went on to the issue of the subsidies that we
inherited which, by the way, were based on 50 to 55 million litres consumption,
and we said the number looked bloated. So, we did an experiment and came to a
conclusion that this country doesn’t consume more than 45 million litres a day.

“Then we came to a second point and said we are not even
going to have subsidy again. We are going to exit it because there was just too
much fraud involved in it.

“We have struggled, queues continue to go and they are back.
And it will continue to happen unless we address the issues.

“If you free up Nigerians to find sources of funds, they
will find those secondary funds. They will import the product; the burden on
the NNPC will reduce and the country will have peace and subsidy will go away
permanently.”